One word pops up repeatedly in conversations about SEC commissioner Greg Sankey: Preparation. That traces its roots to his affinity for John Wooden.
The SEC’s commissioner is a skilled communicator, a pragmatic thinker, and ‘the most prepared person in every room.’
Greg Sankey grew up listening to Final Four basketball games on a transistor radio. His career took him South, where he’s become the most powerful figure in college football.
The most powerful man in college football counts two signed copies of books about a legendary basketball coach among his prized possessions.
John Wooden, the coach, autographed one of the books for Greg Sankey after they met in attendance at a Final Four many years ago, when Sankey was commissioner of the Southland Conference.
The other book, “They Call Me Coach,” features Sankey’s own signature. He inscribed the Wooden autobiography in the sixth grade after winning the book as the prize for a clean desk of the month contest.
That sounds like Sankey. Now in his 11th year as commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, college sports’ power broker in chief earns a reputation for seeing around corners, and a young Sankey signed his copy of the book about the coach he so dearly admires, “lest anyone try to steal it.’
Inside Wooden’s autobiography appears a quote that’s guided Sankey throughout his rise from intramural sports director at a small college in New York all the way to SEC commissioner.
I will get ready and then, perhaps, my chance will come.
Sankey, through subsequent research, learned that quote descends from something said by Abraham Lincoln, another leader he’s studied and admires.
College athletics leaders praise Sankey’s intellect, his pragmatism and his experience.
Alabama athletic director Greg Byrne says Sankey is “often the smartest person in the room,” while Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione lauds him as a forward thinker who’s built up a treasure of trust with groups he serves. West Virginia athletic director Wren Baker describes Sankey as a contemplative leader who does not act in haste.
One word pops up repeatedly in conversations about Sankey: Preparation.
“He is always the most prepared person in every room that he’s in,” says ESPN commentator Paul Finebaum, who regularly interviews Sankey for his talk show on the SEC Network. “He has meticulously gone through every angle and every side. I think that gives him an advantage.”
Sankey prepares, and, when chances arrive, he rarely misses.
Greg Sankey is college football’s most powerful figure
USA TODAY Sports has named Sankey as its most powerful figure in college football, the result of balloting by 10 writers and editors who cover the sport. Among the panel were national college football writers Matt Hayes and Blake Toppmeyer, USA TODAY sports writers Paul Myerberg and Brent Schrotenboer, former USA TODAY sports columnist Dan Wolken and beat writers Frank Bodani (Penn State), Scott Wright (Oklahoma State) and Marc Weiszer (Georgia).
It’s not the first time the most-powerful label has been affixed to Sankey.
Is it good that a commissioner of an individual conference is the most powerful person in college football?
“The question is interesting, because I’ve never accepted the ‘powerful’ label,” Sankey, 61, told USA TODAY Sports. “My responsibility is to be influential and effective.
“If I were to reframe the question, do I think it’s appropriate for a commissioner of one league to be both influential and effective? I do think that is appropriate, and I think that is part of the responsibility. I’m also not so driven by ego that I think this is about me. The position, the conference, the people, the history provide the platform.”
Sankey’s pensive articulation shows his communication chops and his deftness at redirection. Those skills are a byproduct of preparation and self-scouting.
Sankey met with communications consultant Michael Sheehan, a prominent speech coach for multiple U.S. presidents, in 2018 in Washington, D.C.
Sheehan had Sankey review some of his past interviews, to help Sankey develop trust in his communication skills.
“I did so reluctantly,” Sankey said. “The first time I did so I was in the room with (Sheehan), and I think my forehead was sweating.”
The practice stuck. Sankey rewatches and evaluates his interviews. He’s forged a knack for tactfully communicating with a variety of audiences, from reporters to university presidents or athletics directors to athletes to fellow commissioners.
“There aren’t many people who have the ability to communicate effectively with that diverse of a body of people,” Byrne said.
When Alabama landed squarely on the playoff bubble in 2023, Sankey waged an all-out messaging campaign stumping for the SEC’s champion. The playoff committee chose one-loss Alabama as its last team in, at the expense of undefeated Florida State after the Seminoles lost their starting quarterback to injury.
Smart minds can debate whether Sankey’s messaging blitz persuaded that selection. It didn’t hurt.
Greg Sankey leads during the COVID-19 pandemic
Born and raised in central New York, Sankey grew up listening to Final Four games on a transistor radio. His career took him South, where college football rules. Sankey shapes the sport’s direction. He’s been a bulwark against private equity sinking its talons into the game. He was one of the architects of the 12-team College Football Playoff, and he’s a prevalent figure in ongoing talks to determine the playoff’s future size and shape.
If Sankey needs a second opinion on how his message lands, he can ask his parents. They’re regular viewers of “The Paul Finebaum Show,” awaiting their son’s next appearance on the SEC Network. Sankey became a fixture on “Finebaum” throughout the discombobulating spring and summer months of 2020, providing a calming, familiar presence amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“He really showed a great deal of leadership through that period of time,” said Castiglione, describing Sankey as a “voice of reason” throughout what became an inflection point of his career.
Sankey maintained patience while the 2020 season hung in the balance, absorbing information from medical experts and planning protocols for how the season might be conducted.
“My view is, you don’t ever press pause in life,” Sankey said. “If, as some had done, we just shut down and didn’t try, you were losing young people, and they were losing opportunities, they were losing continuity.”
On Aug. 11 of that year, the Big Ten and Pac-12 commissioners announced their conferences were postponing the season for their membership until the spring.
All eyes turned to the SEC. Sankey announced that his conference would maintain its “deliberate approach.”
If the SEC domino had fallen, the reverberation would have rumbled the entire college sports enterprise. It never fell. Sankey and his Big 12 and ACC peers stayed the course.
“That,” Finebaum says, “was a big moment for him.”
The season kicked off in September, after a delayed start.
Big Ten commissioner Jim Delaney, an elder statesman among commissioners and an industry pillar, had retired at the start of 2020. The Big Ten hired Kevin Warren, an NFL team executive, to replace Delaney. If there had been any question about who would be the most prominent and powerful voice among commissioners, Sankey answered it in 2020.
“That’s when I remember this changing of the guard,” Finebaum said. “The SEC had an incredibly visible, thoughtful, soft-spoken person who talked about what could be done, not what couldn’t be done, while the Big Ten was waving the white flag.”
The Big Ten and Pac-12 later reversed course and played in 2020.
Sankey acted stealthily and pounced to lead the SEC snapping up mega brands Texas and Oklahoma in 2021 after those schools cast an eye toward exiting the Big 12. Generally, though, preparation and patience emerge as hallmarks to his power moves.
Consider this offseason. The Big Ten spent several months floating absurd playoff plans that failed to gain traction, while Sankey tactfully advanced the SEC’s pieces on the chess board.
First, the SEC launched a messaging campaign targeted at getting the playoff selection committee to more heavily weight strength of schedule. In a win for the SEC, the playoff committee in August announced changes to its evaluations. Days later, the SEC approved adding a ninth conference game starting in 2026, a move that pairs neatly with the playoff committee’s tweaks.
Sankey long favored the SEC adding a ninth conference game. His membership resisted the change for years, but he patiently inched the ball forward, and SEC university leaders finally approved the change.
How Greg Sankey redirected path toward college athletics
Sankey answered a knock on his dormitory room door and greeted his college baseball coach on a Sunday in 1983. Sankey was a freshman backup catcher for LeTourneau College, a small Christian college in Texas, and his team had played a doubleheader the previous day.
In a game against this opponent earlier in the season, Sankey played and hit a double. So, he thought he’d play in the second game of this Saturday doubleheader. He didn’t play. The starting catcher caught every inning, to Sankey’s chagrin.
Normally a good dugout guy who enthusiastically supported his teammates, Sankey became frustrated at his lack of playing time. He shut down in the second game. Come Sunday, coach Roger Kieffer wanted a chat.
“If we had lost that game yesterday,” Kieffer told Sankey, “I would have considered it your fault.”
Sankey felt puzzled. He hadn’t even played. How would he have been responsible for a loss?
“He said, ‘You have no idea how important you are in your role on this team, and the contributions you make,’” Sankey recalls. “That produced a conversation where, I grew up a little bit that evening.’
That conversation “absolutely rerouted my thinking about myself,” Sankey said.
It also sparked introspection. In what direction did Sankey want his life to go?
He was majoring in engineering at LeTourneau. He couldn’t see the people connection in that line of work, and, anyway, “I don’t think anybody wanted to plug into an electrical socket that I designed,” Sankey quips.
Sankey transferred to a community college in New York, where he played on the basketball team and rerouted toward a career in education. He thought perhaps he’d coach.
After earning his bachelor’s degree at SUNY Cortland, Sankey became Utica College’s intramurals director while pursuing a master’s from Syracuse. He married his wife, Cathy, in 1988. A few months into the marriage, she asked him about his career plans.
“I wonder if I can work in Division I college sports,” Sankey told his wife, “and, if I can, how far might it go?”
It went to such heights that Sankey found himself golfing with the leader of the free world.
Greg Sankey goes from golf coach to golfing with Donald Trump
Not many people can say the President of the United States gave them a mulligan. Sankey can. He joined President Donald Trump and Notre Dame athletic director Pete Bevacqua for a round of golf in June at Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey.
Sankey has lobbied, so far unsuccessfully, for years for federal NIL legislation. This marked his first audience with the president. As for the golf, Sankey had a nice round going through five holes before he sliced his tee shot on No. 6.
Trump offered him a mulligan. Sankey reteed. He promptly sliced the mulligan tee shot, too. Whoops. He recovered to shoot a respectable score in “the low 90s,” as Sankey recalls it. As golf stories go, that’s a good one. Here’s another.
Sankey launched his Division I athletics career at Northwestern State in Louisiana, where he worked in compliance, but when the school found itself needing a golf coach, the athletic director asked Sankey whether he’d be up for adding coaching to his athletic department duties.
Sankey, by his own admission, was not a good golfer, but he owned a nice set of Ping golf clubs that he’d purchased back in New York, and he had the necessary organizational skills, plus a philosophy to embrace opportunities.
Northwestern State’s golf program had spent years in Southland Conference’s cellar. In Sankey’s first season as coach, the team moved up one spot in the standings. Progress.
The next year, the team finished in the middle of the conference. Sankey earned recognition as district coach of the year. All these years later, even after his career climbed to the Southland Conference’s commissionership, then to a position at the SEC, and then to the SEC’s top perch, that golf coaching award remains a source of pride for Sankey.
Sankey is the only Power Four conference commissioner who’s been the commissioner of a lower-level conference. He’s also the only one to coach college golf. He’s the product of a career spent within college athletics, and his experience working within the system earns him credibility, inside and outside of the SEC.
“If you look at people who can influence decisions, people whose opinion is sought after and considered with great weight on issues that are pertinent and relevant, if you’re making a list, you certainly don’t get very far down that list without getting to his name,” said Baker, the West Virginia athletic director who met Sankey while Missouri’s deputy athletics director.
Thirty-six years ago, an intramural sports director told his wife he’d like to see how far he could take a career in Division I athletics.
“I didn’t define the parameters,” Sankey said, “and it’s resulted in a pretty good answer.”
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s senior national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.
(This story was updated to change a video.)